IV. SECOND ATTITUDE OF 
THOUGHT TO OBJECTIVITY
I. EMPIRICISM
§37
Under these circumstances a double want began to be felt. Partly it was the 
need of a concrete subject-matter, as a counterpoise to the abstract theories 
of the understanding, which is unable to advance unaided from its 
generalities to specialisation and determination. Partly, too, it was the 
demand for something fixed and secure, so as to exclude the possibility of 
proving anything and everything in the sphere, and according to the 
method, of the finite formulae of thought. Such was the genesis of 
Empirical philosophy, which abandons the search for truth in thought itself, 
and goes to fetch it from Experience, the outward and the inward present.
§37n
The rise of Empiricism is due to the need thus stated of concrete contents, 
and a firm footing - needs which the abstract metaphysic of the 
understanding failed to satisfy. Now by concreteness of contents it is meant 
that we must know the objects of consciousness as intrinsically determinate 
and as the unity of distinct characteristics. But, as we have already seen, 
this is by no means the case with the metaphysic of understanding, if it 
conform to its principle. With the mere understanding, thinking is limited 
to the form of an abstract universal, and can never advance to the 
particularisation of this universal. Thus we find the metaphysicians 
engaged in an attempt to elicit by the instrumentality of thought what was 
the essence or fundamental attribute of the Soul. The Soul, they said, is 
simple. The simplicity thus ascribed to the Soul meant a mere and utter 
simplicity, from which difference is excluded: difference, or in other words 
composition, being made the fundamental attribute of body, or of matter in 
general. Clearly, in simplicity of this narrow type we have a very shallow 
category, quite incapable of embracing the wealth of the soul or of the 
mind. When it thus appeared that abstract metaphysical thinking was 
inadequate, it was felt that resource must be had to empirical psychology. 
The same happened in the case of Rational Physics. The current phrases 
there were, for instance, that space is infinite, that Nature makes no leap, 
etc. Evidently this phraseology was wholly unsatisfactory in presence of the 
plenitude and life of nature.
§38n
From Empiricism came the cry: 'Stop roaming in empty abstractions keep 
your eyes open, lay hold on man and nature as they are here before I you, 
enjoy the present moment.' Nobody can deny that there is a good deal of 
truth in these words. The everyday world, what is here and now was a good 
exchange for the futile other-world - for the mirages and the chimeras of 
the abstract understanding. And thus was acquired an infinite principle - 
that solid footing so much missed in the old metaphysic. Finite principles 
are the most that the understanding can pick out - and these being 
essentially unstable and tottering, the structure they supported must 
collapse with a crash. Always the instinct of reason was to find an infinite 
principle. As yet, the time had not come for finding it in thought. Hence, 
this instinct seized upon the present, the Here, the This - where doubtless 
there is implicit infinite form, but not in the genuine existence of that form. 
The external world is the truth, it if could but know it: for the truth is actual 
and must exist. The infinite principle, the self-centred truth, therefore, is in 
the world for reason to discover: though it exists in an individual and 
sensible shape, and not in its truth.
Besides, this school makes sense-perception the form in which fact is to be 
apprehended; and in this consists the defect of Empiricism. Sense 
perception as such is always individual, always transient: not indeed that 
the process of knowledge stops short at sensation: on the contrary, it 
proceeds to find out the universal and permanent element in the individual 
apprehended by sense. This is the process leading from simple perception 
to experience.
In order to form experiences, Empiricism makes especial use of the form of 
Analysis. In the impression of sense we have a concrete of many elements, 
the several attributes of which we are expected to peel off one by one, like 
the coats of an onion. In thus dismembering the thing, it is understood that 
we disintegrate and take to pieces these attributes which have coalesced, 
and add nothing but our own act of disintegration. Yet analysis is the 
process from the immediacy of sensation to thought: those attributes, which 
the object analysed contains in union, acquire the form of universality by 
being separated. Empiricism therefore labours under a delusion, if it 
supposes that, while analysing the objects, it leaves them as they were: it 
really transforms the concrete into an abstract. And as a consequence of 
this change the living thing is killed: life can exist only in the concrete and 
one. Not that we can do without this division, if it be our intention to 
comprehend. Mind itself is an inherent division. The error lies in forgetting 
that this is only one half of the process, and that the main point is the 
reunion of what has been parted. And it is where analysis never gets beyond 
the stage of partition that the words of the poet are true:

Encheiresin Naturae nennt's die Chemie,
Spottet ihrer selbat, und weiss nicht, wie:
hat die Theile in ihrer Hand,
Fehlt leider nur das geistige Band.

Analysis starts from the concrete; and the possession of this material gives 
it a considerable advantage over the abstract thinking of the old 
metaphysics. It establishes the differences in things, and this is very 
important; but these very differences are nothing after all but abstract 
attributes, i.e. thoughts. These thoughts, it is assumed, contain the real 
essence of the objects; and thus once more we see the axiom of bygone 
metaphysics reappear, that the truth of things lies in thought.
Let us next compare the empirical theory with that of metaphysics in the 
matter of their respective contents . We find the latter, as already stated, 
taking for its theme the universal objects of the reason, viz. God, the Soul, 
and the World: and these themes, accepted from popular conception, it was 
the problem of philosophy to reduce into the form of thoughts. Another 
specimen of the same method was the Scholastic philosophy, the theme 
presupposed by which was formed by the dogmas of the Christian Church; 
and it aimed at fixing their meaning and giving them a systematic 
arrangement through thought. The facts on which Empiricism is based are 
of entirely different kind. They are the sensible facts of nature and the facts 
of the finite mind. In other words, Empiricism deals with a finite material, 
and the old metaphysicians had an infinite - though, let us add, they made 
this infinite content finite by the finite form of the understanding. The same 
finitude of form reappears in Empiricism - but here the facts are finite also. 
To this extent, then, both modes of philosophising have the same method; 
both proceed from data or assumptions, which they accept as ultimate. 
Generally speaking, Empiricism finds the truth in the outward world, and 
even if it allow a supersensible world, it holds knowledge of that world to 
be impossible, and would restrict us to the province of sense-perception. 
This doctrine when systematically carried out produces what has been 
latterly termed Materialism. Materialism of this stamp looks upon matter, 
qua matter, as the genuine objective world. But with matter we are at once 
introduced to an abstraction, which as such cannot be perceived, and it may 
be maintained that there is no matter, because, as it exists, it is always 
something definite and concrete. Yet the abstraction we term matter is 
supposed to lie at the basis of the whole world of sense, and expresses the 
sense-world in its simplest terms as out-and-out individualisation, and 
hence a congeries of points in mutual exclusion. So long then as this 
sensible sphere is and continues to be for Empiricism a mere datum, we 
have a doctrine of bondage: for we become free, when we are confronted 
by no absolutely alien world, but depend upon a fact which we ourselves 
are. Consistently with the empirical point of view, besides, reason and 
unreason can only be subjective: in other words, we must take what is 
given just as it is, and we have no right to ask whether and to what extent it 
is rational in its own nature.
II. THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY
§40
In common with Empiricism the Critical Philosophy assumes that 
experience affords the one sole foundation for cognitions; which however it 
does not allow to rank as truths, but only as knowledge of phenomena.
The Critical theory starts originally from the distinction of elements 
presented in the analysis of experience, viz. the matter of sense, and its 
universal relations. Taking into account Hume's criticism on this distinction 
as given in the preceding section, viz. that sensation does not explicitly 
apprehend more than an individual or more than a mere event, it insists at 
the same time on the fact that universality and necessity are seen to 
perform a function equally essential in constituting what is called 
experience. This element, not being derived from the empirical facts as 
such, must belong to the spontaneity of thought; in other words, it is a 
priori. The Categories or Notions of the Understanding constitute the 
objectivity of experiential cognitions. In every case they involve a 
connective reference, and hence through their means are formed synthetic 
judgements a priori, that is, primary and underivative connections of 
opposites.
Even Hume's scepticism does not deny that the characteristics of 
universality and necessity are found in cognition. And even in Kant this 
fact remains a presupposition after all; it may be said, to use the ordinary 
phraseology of the sciences, that Kant did no more than offer another 
explanation of the fact.
§40n
(1) A very important step was undoubtedly made, when the terms of the old 
metaphysic were subjected to scrutiny. The plain thinker pursued his 
unsuspecting way in those categories which had offered themselves 
naturally. It never occurred to him to ask to what extent these categories 
had a value and authority of their own. If, as has been said, it is 
characteristic of free thought to allow no assumptions to pass unquestioned, 
the old metaphysicians were not free thinkers. They accepted their 
categories as they were, without further trouble, as an a priori datum, not 
yet tested by reflection. The Critical philosophy reversed this. Kant 
undertook to examine how far the forms of thought were capable of leading 
to the knowledge of truth. In particular he demanded a criticism of the 
faculty of cognition as preliminary to its exercise. That is a fair demand, if 
it mean that even the forms of thought must be made an object of 
investigation. Unfortunately there soon creeps in the misconception of 
already knowing before you know - the error of refusing to enter the water 
until you have learnt to swim. True, indeed, the forms of thought should be 
subjected to a scrutiny before they are used: yet what is this scrutiny but 
ipso facto a cognition? So that what we want is to combine in our process 
of inquiry the action of the forms of thought with a criticism of them. The 
forms of thought must be studied in their essential nature and complete 
development: they are at once the object of research and the action of that 
object. Hence they examine themselves: in their own action they must 
determine their limits, and point out their defects. This is that action of 
thought, which will hereafter be specially considered under the name of 
Dialectic, and regarding which we need only at the outset observe that, 
instead of being brought to bear upon the categories from without, it is 
Immanent in their own action.
We may therefore state the first point in Kant's philosophy as follows: 
Thought must itself investigate its own capacity of knowledge. People in 
the present day have got over Kant and his philosophy: everybody wants to 
get further. But there are two ways of going further - a backward and a 
forward. The light of criticism soon shows that many of our modern essays 
in philosophy are mere repetitions of the old metaphysical method, an 
endless and uncritical thinking in a groove determined by the natural bent 
of each man's mind.
(2) Kant's examination of the categories suffers from the grave defect of 
viewing them, not absolutely and for their own sake, but in order to see 
whether they are subjective or objective. In the language of common life 
we mean by objective what exists outside of us and reaches us from 
without by means of sensation. What Kant did was to deny that the 
categories, such as cause and effect, were, in this sense of the word, 
objective, or given in sensation, and to maintain on the contrary that they 
belonged to our own thought itself, to the spontaneity of thought. To that 
extent therefore they were subjective. And yet in spite of this, Kant gives 
the name objective to what is thought, to the universal and necessary, while 
he describes as subjective whatever is merely felt. This arrangement 
apparently reverses the first-mentioned use of the word, and has caused 
Kant to be charged with confusing language. But the charge is unfair if we 
more narrowly consider the facts of the case. The vulgar believe that the 
objects of perception which confront them, such as an individual animal, or 
a single star, are independent and permanent existences, compared with 
which thoughts are unsubstantial and dependent on something else. In fact 
however the perceptions of sense are the properly dependent and secondary 
feature, while the thoughts are really independent and primary. This being 
so, Kant gave the title objective to the intellectual factor, to the universal 
and necessary: and he was quite justified in so doing. Our sensations on the 
other hand are subjective; for sensations lack stability in their own nature, 
and are no less fleeting and evanescent than thought is permanent and self-
subsisting. At the present day, the special line of distinction established by 
Kant between the subjective and objective is adopted by the phraseology of 
the educated world. Thus the criticism of a work of art ought, it is said, to 
be not subjective, but objective- in other words, instead of springing from 
the particular and accidental feeling or temper of the moment, it should 
keep its eye on those general points of view which the laws of art establish. 
In the same acceptation we can distinguish in any scientific pursuit the 
objective and the subjective interest of the investigation.
But after all, objectivity of thought, in Kant's sense, is again to a certain 
extent subjective. Thoughts, according to Kant, although universal and 
necessary categories, are only our thoughts - separated by an impassable 
gulf from the thing, as it exists apart from our know-ledge. But the true 
objectivity of thinking means that the thoughts, far from being merely ours, 
must at the same time be the real essence of the things, and of whatever is 
an object to us.
Objective and subjective are convenient expressions in current use, the 
employment of which may easily lead to confusion. Up to this point, the 
discussion has shown three meanings of objectivity. First, it means what 
has external existence, in distinction from which the subjective is what is 
only supposed, dreamed, &c. Secondly, it has the meaning, attached to it by 
Kant, of the universal and necessary, as distinguished from the particular, 
subjective, and occasional element which belongs to our sensations. 
Thirdly, as has been just explained, it means the thought-apprehended 
essence of the existing thing, in contradistinction from what is merely our 
thought, and what consequently is still separated from the thing itself, as it 
exists in independent essence.
§42n
(1) Kant therefore holds that the categories have their source in the 'Ego' 
and that the 'Ego' consequently supplies the characteristics of universality 
and necessity. If we observe what we have before us primarily, we may 
describe it as a congeries or diversity: and in the categories we find the 
simple points or units, to which this congeries is made to converge. The 
world of sense is a scene of mutual exclusion: its being is outside itself. 
That is the fundamental feature of the sensible. 'Now' has no meaning 
except in reference to a before and a hereafter. Red, in the same way, only 
subsists by being opposed to yellow and blue. Now this other thing is 
outside the sensible; which latter is, only in so far as it is not the other, and 
only in so far as that other is. But thought, or the 'Ego', occupies a position 
the very reverse of the sensible, with its mutual exclusions, and its being 
outside itself. The 'I' is the primary identity - at one with itself and all at 
home in itself. The word ' I' expresses the mere act of bringing-to-bear-
upon-self: and whatever is placed in this unit or focus is affected by it and 
transformed into it. The 'I' is as it were the crucible and the fire which 
consumes the loose plurality of sense and reduces it to unity. This is the 
process which Kant calls pure apperception in distinction from the 
common apperception, to which the plurality it receives is a plurality still; 
whereas pure apperception is rather an act by which the 'I' makes the 
materials 'mine'.
This view has at least the merit of giving a correct expression to the nature 
of all consciousness. The tendency of all man's endeavours is to understand 
the world, to appropriate and subdue it to himself: and to this end the 
positive reality of the world must be as it were crushed and pounded, in 
other words, idealised. At the same time we must note that it is not the 
mere act of our personal self-consciousness which introduces an absolute 
unity into the variety of sense. Rather, this identity is itself the absolute. 
The absolute is, as it were, so kind as to leave individual things to their 
own enjoyment, and it again drives them back to the absolute unity.
(2) Expressions like 'transcendental unity of self-consciousness' have an 
ugly look about them, and suggest a monster in the background: but their 
meaning is not so abstruse as it looks. Kant's meaning of transcendental 
may be gathered by the way he distinguishes it from transcendent. The 
transcendent may be said to be what steps out beyond the categories of the 
understanding: a sense in which the term is first employed in mathematics. 
Thus in geometry you are told to conceive the circumference of a circle as 
formed of an infinite number of infinitely small straight lines. In other 
words, characteristics which the understanding holds to be totally different, 
the straight line and the curve, are expressly invested with identity. Another 
transcendent of the same kind is the self-consciousness which is identical 
with itself and infinite in itself, as distinguished from the ordinary 
consciousness which derives its form and tone from finite materials. That 
unity of self-consciousness, however, Kant called transcendental only; and 
he meant thereby that the unity was only in our minds and did not attach to 
the objects apart from our knowledge of them.
(3) To regard the categories as subjective only, i.e. as a part of ourselves, 
must seem very odd to the natural mind; and no doubt there is something 
queer about it. It is quite true however that the categories are not contained 
in the sensation as it is given us. When, for instance, we look at a piece of 
sugar, we find it is hard, white, sweet, etc. All these properties we say are 
united in one object. Now it is this unity that is not found in the sensation. 
The same thing happens if we conceive two events to stand in the relation 
of cause and effect. The senses only inform us of the two several 
occurrences which follow each other in time. But that the one is cause, the 
other effect - in other words, the causal nexus between the two - is not 
perceived by sense; it is only evident to thought. Still, though the 
categories, such as unity, or cause and effect, are strictly the property of 
thought, it by no means follows that they must be ours merely and not also 
characteristics of the objects. Kant however confines them to the subject-
mind, and his philosophy may be styled subjective idealism: for he holds 
that both the form and the matter of knowledge are supplied by the Ego - or 
knowing subject - the form by our intellectual, the matter by our sentient 
ego.
So far as regards the content of this subjective idealism, not a word need be 
wasted. It might perhaps at first sight be imagined, that objects would lose 
their reality when their unity was transferred to the subject. But neither we 
nor the objects would have anything to gain by the mere fact that they 
possessed being. The main point is not, that they are, but what they are, and 
whether or not their content is true. It does no good to the things to say 
merely that they have being. What has being, will also cease to be when 
time creeps over it. It might also be alleged that subjective idealism tended 
to promote self-conceit. But surely if a man's world be the sum of his 
sensible perceptions, he has no reason to be vain of such a world. Laying 
aside therefore as unimportant this distinction between subjective and 
objective, we are chiefly interested in knowing what a thing is: i.e. its 
content, which is no more objective than it is subjective. If mere existence 
be enough to make objectivity, even a crime is objective: but it is an 
existence which is nullity at the core, as is definitely made apparent when 
the day of punishment comes.
§43n
To assert that the categories taken by themselves are empty can scarcely be 
right, seeing that they have a content, at all events, in the special stamp and 
significance which they possess. Of course the content of the categories is 
not perceptible to the senses, nor is it in time and space: but that is rather a 
merit than a defect. A glimpse of this meaning of content may be observed 
to affect our ordinary thinking. A book or a speech for example is said to 
have a great deal in it, to be full of content in proportion to the greater 
number of thoughts and general results to be found in it: while, on the 
contrary, we should never say that any book, e.g. a novel, had much in it, 
because it included a great number of single incidents, situations, and the 
like. Even the popular voice thus recognises that something more than the 
facts of sense is needed to make a work pregnant with matter. And what is 
this additional desideratum but thoughts, or in the first instance the 
categories? And yet it is not altogether wrong, it should be added, to call 
the categories of themselves empty, if it be meant that they and the logical 
Idea, of which they are the members, do not constitute the whole of 
philosophy, but necessarily lead onwards in due progress to the real 
departments of Nature and Mind. Only let the progress not be 
misunderstood. The logical Idea does not thereby come into possession of a 
content originally foreign to it: but by its own native action is specialised 
and developed to Nature and Mind.
§45n
Kant was the first definitely to signalise the distinction between Reason 
and Understanding. The object of the former, as he applied the term, was 
the infinite and unconditioned, of the latter the finite and conditioned. Kant 
did valuable service when he enforced the finite character of the cognitions 
of the understanding founded merely upon experience, and stamped their 
contents with the name of appearance. But his mistake was to stop at the 
purely negative point of view, and to limit the unconditionality of Reason 
to an abstract self-sameness without any shade of distinction. It degrades 
Reason to a finite and conditioned thing, to identify it with a mere stepping 
beyond the finite and conditioned range of understanding. The real infinite, 
far from being a mere transcendence of the finite, always involves the 
absorption of the finite into its own fuller nature. In the same way Kant 
restored the Idea to its proper dignity: vindicating it for Reason, as a thing 
distinct from abstract analytic determinations or from the merely sensible 
conceptions which usually appropriate to themselves the name of ideas. 
But as respects the Idea also, he never got beyond its negative aspect, as 
what ought to be but is not.
The view that the objects of immediate consciousness, which constitute the 
body of experience, are mere appearances (phenomena) was another 
important result of the Kantian philosophy. Common Sense, that mixture of 
sense and understanding, believes the objects of which it has knowledge to 
be severally independent and self-supporting; and when it becomes evident 
that they tend towards and limit one another, the interdependence of one 
upon another is reckoned something foreign to them and to their true 
nature. The very opposite is the truth. The things immediately known are 
mere appearances - in other words, the ground of their being is not in 
themselves but in something else. But then comes the important step of 
defining what this something else is. According to Kant, the things that we 
know about are to us appearances only, and we can never know their 
essential nature, which belongs to another world we cannot approach. Plain 
minds have not unreasonably taken exception to this subjective idealism, 
with its reduction of the facts of consciousness to a purely personal world, 
created by ourselves alone. For the true statement of the case is rather as 
follows. The things of which we have direct consciousness are mere 
phenomena, not for us only, but in their own nature; and the true and 
proper case of these things, finite as they are, is to have their existence 
founded not in themselves but in the universal divine Idea. This view of 
things, it is true, is as idealist as Kant's; but in contradistinction to the 
subjective idealism of the Critical philosophy should be termed absolute 
idealism. Absolute idealism, however, though it is far in advance of vulgar 
realism, is by no means merely restricted to philosophy. It lies at the root of 
all religion; for religion too believes the actual world we see, the sum total 
of existence, to be created and governed by God.
§47
If thought and phenomenon do not perfectly correspond to one another, we 
are free at least to choose which of the two shall be held the defaulter. The 
Kantian idealism, where it touches on the world of Reason, throws the 
blame on the thoughts; saying that the thoughts are defective, as not being 
exactly fitted to the sensations and to a mode of mind wholly restricted 
within the range of sensation, in which as such there are no traces of the 
presence of these thoughts. But as to the actual content of the thought, no 
question is raised.
§47n
Paralogisms are a species of unsound syllogism, the especial vice of which 
consists in employing one and the same word in the two premises with a 
different meaning. According to Kant the method adopted by the rational 
psychology of the old metaphysicians, when they assumed that the qualities 
of the phenomenal soul, as given in experience, formed part of its own real 
essence, was based upon such a Paralogism. Nor can it be denied that 
predicates like simplicity, permanence, etc., are inapplicable to the soul. 
But their unfitness is not due to the ground assigned by Kant, that Reason, 
by applying them, would exceed its appointed bounds. The true ground is 
that this style of abstract terms is not good enough for the soul, which is 
very much more than a mere simple or unchangeable sort of thing. And 
thus, for example, while the soul may be admitted to be simple 
selfsameness, it is at the same time active and institutes distinctions in its 
own nature. But whatever is merely or abstractly simple is as such also a 
mere dead thing. By his polemic against the metaphysic of the past Kant 
discarded those predicates from the soul or mind. He did well; but when he 
came to state his reasons, his failure is apparent.
§48n
The principles of the metaphysical philosophy gave rise to the belief that, 
when cognition lapsed into contradictions, it was a mere accidental 
aberration, due to some subjective mistake in argument and inference. 
According to Kant, however, thought has a natural tendency to issue in 
contradictions or antinomies, whenever it seeks to apprehend the infinite. 
We have in the latter part of the above paragraph referred to the 
philosophical importance of the antinomies of reason, and shown how the 
recognition of their existence helped largely to get rid of the rigid 
dogmatism of the metaphysic of understanding, and to direct attention to 
the Dialectical movement of thought. But here too Kant, as we must add, 
never got beyond the negative result that the thing-in-itself is unknowable, 
and never penetrated to the discovery of what the antinomies really and 
positively mean. That true and positive meaning of the antinomies is this: 
that every actual thing involves a coexistence of opposed elements. 
Consequently to know, or, in other words, to comprehend an object is 
equivalent to being conscious of it as a concrete unity of opposed 
determinations. The old metaphysic, as we have already seen, when it 
studied the objects of which it sought a metaphysical knowledge, went to 
work by applying categories abstractly and to the exclusion of their 
opposites. Kant, on the other hand, tried to prove that the statements 
issuing through this method could be met by other statements of contrary 
import with equal warrant and equal necessity. In the enumeration of these 
antinomies he narrowed his ground to the cosmology of the old 
metaphysical system, and in his discussion made out four antinomies, a 
number which rests upon the list of the categories. The first antinomy is on 
the question: Whether we are or are not to think the world limited in space 
and time. In the second antinomy we have a discussion of the dilemma: 
Matter must be conceived either as endlessly divisible, or as consisting of 
atoms. The third antinomy bears upon the antithesis of freedom and 
necessity, to such extent as it is embraced in the question, Whether 
everything in the world must be supposed subject to the condition of 
causality, or if we can also assume free beings, in other words absolute 
initial points of action, in the world. Finally, the fourth antinomy is the 
dilemma: Either the world as a whole has a cause or it is uncaused.
The method which Kant follows in discussing these antinomies is as 
follows. He puts the two propositions implied in the dilemma over against 
each other as thesis and antithesis, and seeks to prove both: that is to say he 
tries to exhibit them as inevitably issuing from reflection on the question. 
He particularly protests against the charge of being a special pleader and of 
grounding his reasoning on illusions. Speaking honestly, however, the 
arguments which Kant offers for his thesis and antithesis are mere shams of 
demonstration. The thing to be proved is invariably implied in the 
assumption he starts from, and the speciousness of his proofs is only due to 
his prolix and apagogic mode of procedure. Yet it was, and still is, a great 
achievement for the Critical philosophy when it exhibited these antinomies: 
for in this way it gave some expression (at first certainly subjective and 
unexplained) to the actual unity of those categories which are kept 
persistently separate by the understanding. The first of the cosmological 
antinomies, for example, implies a recognition of the doctrine that space 
and time present a discrete as well as a continuous aspect: whereas the old 
metaphysic, laying exclusive emphasis on the continuity, had been led to 
treat the world as unlimited in space and time. It is quite correct to say that 
we can go beyond every definite space and beyond every definite time: but 
it is no less correct that space and time are real and actual only when they 
are defined or specialised into 'here' and 'now' - a specialisation which is 
involved in the very notion of them. The same observations apply to the 
rest of the antinomies. Take, for example, the antinomy of freedom and 
necessity. The main gist of it is that freedom and necessity as understood 
by abstract thinkers are not independently real, as these thinkers suppose, 
but merely ideal factors (moments) of the true freedom and the true 
necessity, and that to abstract and isolate either conception is to make it 
false.
§52n
Kant undoubtedly held reason to be the faculty of the unconditioned but if 
reason be reduced to abstract identity only, it by implication renounces its 
unconditionality and is in reality no better than empty understanding. For 
reason is unconditioned only in so far as its character and quality are not 
due to an extraneous and foreign content, only in so far as it is self-
characterising, and thus, in point of content, is its own master. Kant, 
however, expressly explains that the action of reason consists solely in 
applying the categories to systematise the matter given by perception, i.e. to 
place it in an outside order, under the guidance of the principle of non-
contradiction.
§54n
The free self-determination which Kant denied to the speculative, he has 
expressly vindicated for the practical reason. To many minds this particular 
aspect of the Kantian philosophy made it welcome; and that for good 
reasons. To estimate rightly what we owe to Kant in the matter, we ought 
to set before our minds the form of practical philosophy and in particular of 
'moral philosophy' which prevailed in his time. It may be generally 
described as a system of Eudaemonism, which, when asked what man's 
chief end ought to be, replied Happiness. And by happiness Eudaemonism 
understood the satisfaction of the private appetites, wishes, and wants of 
the man: thus raising the contingent and particular into a principle for the 
will and its actualisation. To this Eudaemonism, which was destitute of 
stability and consistency, and which left the 'door and gate' wide open for 
every whim and caprice, Kant opposed the practical reason, and thus 
emphasised the need for a principle of will which should be universal and 
lay the same obligation on all. The theoretical reason, as has been made 
evident in the preceding paragraphs, is identified by Kant with the negative 
faculty of the infinite; and as it has no positive content of its own, it is 
restricted to the function of detecting the finitude of experiential 
knowledge. To the practical reason, on the contrary, he has expressly 
allowed a positive infinity, by ascribing to the will the power of modifying 
itself in universal modes, i.e. by thought. Such a power the will 
undoubtedly has: and it is well to remember that man is free only in so far 
as he possesses it and avails himself of it in his conduct. But a recognition 
of the existence of this power is not enough and does not avail to tell us 
what are the contents of the will or practical reason. Hence to say that a 
man must make the Good the content of his will raises the question, what 
that content is, and what are the means of ascertaining what good is. Nor 
does one get over the difficulty by the principle that the will must be 
consistent with itself, or by the precept to do duty for the sake of duty.
§60n
(1) The Critical philosophy has one great negative merit. It has brought 
home the conviction that the categories of understanding are finite in their 
range, and that any cognitive process confined within their pale falls short 
of the truth. But Kant had only a sight of half the truth. He explained the 
finite nature of the categories to mean that they were subjective only, valid 
only for our thought, from which the thing-in-itself was divided by an 
impassable gulf. In fact, however, it is not because they are subjective that 
the categories are finite: they are finite by their very nature, and it is on 
their own selves that it is requisite to exhibit their finitude. Kant however 
holds that what we think is false, because it is we who think it. A further 
deficiency in the system is that it gives only a historical description of 
thought, and a mere enumeration of the factors of consciousness. The 
enumeration is in the main correct: but not a word touches upon the 
necessity of what is thus empirically colligated. The observations made on 
the various stages of consciousness culminant in the summary statement 
that the content of all we are acquainted with is only an appearance. And as 
it is true at least that all finite thinking is concerned with appearances, so 
far the conclusion is justified. This stage of 'appearance' however - the 
phenomenal world - is not the terminus of thought: there is another and a 
higher region. But that region was to the Kantian philosophy an 
inaccessible 'other world'.
(2) After all it was only formally that the Kantian system established the 
principle that thought is spontaneous and self-determining. Into details of 
the manner and the extent of this self-determination of thought, Kant never 
went. It was Fichte who first noticed the omission; and who, after he had 
called attention to the want of a deduction for the categories, endeavoured 
really to supply something of the kind. With Fichte, the 'Ego' is the starting-
point in the philosophical development: and the outcome of its action is 
supposed to be visible in the categories. But in Fichte the 'Ego' is not really 
presented as a free, spontaneous energy; it is supposed to receive its first 
excitation by a shock or impulse from without. Against this shock the 'Ego' 
will, it is assumed, react, and only through this reaction does it first become 
conscious of itself. Meanwhile, the nature of the impulse remains a stranger 
beyond our pale: and the 'Ego', with something else always confronting it, 
is weighted with a condition. Fichte, in consequence, never advanced 
beyond Kant's conclusion, that the finite only is knowable, while the 
infinite transcends the range of thought. What Kant calls the thing-by-itself, 
Fichte calls the impulse from without - that abstraction of something else 
than 'I', not otherwise describable or definable than as the negative or non-
Ego in general. The 'I' is thus looked at as standing in essential relation with 
the not-I, through which its act of self-determination is first awakened. And 
in this manner the 'I' is but the continuous act of self-liberation from this 
impulse, never gaining a real freedom, because with the surcease of the 
impulse the 'I', whose being is its action, would also cease to be. Nor is the 
content produced by the action of the ' I' at all different from the ordinary 
content of experience, except by the supplementary remark, that this 
content is mere appearance .